Maltin | |
|---|---|
 Map of Maltese Diaspora | |
| Total population | |
| c.400,000–700,000[a] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Malta 404,113[1] | |
 Australia | 198,996[2] |
 Canada | 41,920[3] |
 United States | 40,820(2016)[4] |
 United Kingdom | 40,230[5] (Maltese-born) |
 Italy | 31,000[6] |
 South Africa | 1,000[7] |
 Germany | 1,000[8] |
 Turkey | ~1,000–2,000[9][10] |
 Tunisia | < 200 (many resettled in Malta after the 1950s)[11] |
 Brazil | 123(2024)[12] |
| Languages | |
| Maltese English • Italian | |
| Religion | |
| PredominantlyLatin Catholicism[13][14] | |
a The total figure is merely an estimation from all the referenced populations. | |
TheMaltese (Maltese:Maltin) people are anethnic group native toMalta who speakMaltese, aSemitic language descended fromSiculo-Arabic with a substantialRomancesuperstratum,[15] and share a commonMaltese history andculture characterised byLatin Catholicism, which remains thestate religion.[16] Malta, anisland country in theMediterranean Sea, is anarchipelago that also includes an island of the same name together with the islands ofGozo (Maltese:Għawdex) andComino (Maltese:Kemmuna); people of Gozo,Gozitans (Maltese:Għawdxin) are considered a subgroup of the Maltese.
The current Maltese people, characterised by the use of theMaltese language and byLatin Catholicism, are the descendants – through much mixing – of colonists fromSicily andCalabria who repopulated theMaltese islands in the beginning of the second millennium after a two-century lapse of depopulation that followed theIfriqiyianconquest by theAghlabids in AD 870.[17][18]
A genetic study by Capelli et al. indicates that Malta was barely inhabited at the turn of the tenth century and was likely to have been repopulated by settlers from Sicily and Calabria who spokeSiculo-Arabic.[19][18]Previous inhabitants of the islands –Phoenicians,Romans,Byzantines – did not leave many traces, as most place names were lost and replaced. TheNormans conquered the island in 1091 and completely re-Christianised them by 1249.[20] This re-Christianisation created the conditions for the evolution of theMaltese language from the now extinctSiculo-Arabic dialect.[21]
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The influences on the population after this have been fiercely debated among historians and geneticists. The origins question is complicated by numerous factors, including Malta's turbulent history of invasions and conquests, with long periods ofdepopulation followed by periods of immigration to Malta and intermarriage with the Maltese by foreigners from theMediterranean,Western andSouthern European countries that ruled Malta. The many demographic influences on the island include:
Over time, the various rulers of Malta published their own view of the ethnicity of the population.[26] TheKnights of Malta downplayed the historic period ofIslam in Malta and promoted the idea of a continuousRoman Catholic presence on the islands.[27] and the British colonial rule disregarded a genetic and cultural connection between the Maltese and Italians in an attempt to counteract growingItalian irredentism in Malta.
According to Capelli et al. (2005),Y-DNA haplogroups are found at the following frequencies in Malta:R1 (35.55% including 32.2% R1b),J (28.90% including 21.10% J2 and 7.8% J1),I (12.20%),E (11.10% including 8.9% E1b1b),F (6.70%),K (4.40%),P (1.10%).[28] R1 and I haplogroups are typical inWest European andNorth European populations while J and E1b1b (and their various subclades) consist of lineages with differential distribution acrossEurope and theMediterranean. The study by Capelli et al. has concluded that the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy[29] and that there is a minuscule input from the Eastern Mediterranean.[30] The study also indicates that Malta was barely inhabited at the turn of the tenth century and was likely to have been repopulated by settlers from Sicily andCalabria who spokeSiculo-Arabic.[19][18] These findings confirm the onomastic and linguistic evidence presented in 1993 by Geoffrey Hull, who traced the oldest Maltese surnames to southern and south-eastern Sicily, especially theAgrigento district.[31]
Another study carried out by geneticistsSpencer Wells and Pierre Zalloua et al. in 2008 claimed that more than 50% of Y-chromosomes from Maltese men could havePhoenician origins.[33][34] Another study contested these conclusions, claiming that Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution in the central and western Mediterranean. The authors suggest that no single Y-dna haplogroup can serve as and effective marker for Phoenician expansion.[35]
According to a 2014 study by Iosif Lazaridis et al., the genetic makeup of most European populations is a mixture of three ancestral sources:Western Hunter-Gatherer,Ancient North Eurasian andEarly European Farmer, but this model does not work for groups like the Maltese people and Sicilians. They have more Near Eastern-related ancestry than can be explained by EEF admixture. They "also cannot be jointly fit with other Europeans", as they are shifted towards Near Eastern populations. Maltese people "fall in the gap between European and Near Easterners".[36]
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The culture of Malta is a reflection of various cultures that have come into contact with theMaltese Islands throughout the centuries, including neighbouringMediterranean cultures, and the cultures of the nations that ruledMalta for long periods of time prior to itsindependence in 1964.
The culture of modern Malta has been described as a "rich pattern of traditions, beliefs and practices," which is the result of "a long process of adaptation, assimilation and cross fertilisation of beliefs and usages drawn from various conflicting sources." It has been subjected to the same complex, historic processes that gave rise to the linguistic and ethnic admixture that defines who the people of Malta and Gozo are today.[37]
Maltese people speak theMaltese language, aSemitic language with a substantial Romance (Italian) superstratum and morphology, and written in theLatin alphabet in its standard form. The language is descended fromSiculo-Arabic, an extinctdialect of Arabic that was spoken inSicily by indigenous people who were at that time divided in religion into continuing Greek-rite Christians and Muslims whose recent ancestors were Sicilian converts from Christianity.[38] In the course of Malta's history, the language has adopted massive amounts of vocabulary fromSicilian andItalian, to a much lesser degree, borrowings from English (anglicisms being more common in colloquial Maltese than in the literary language), and a few dozen French loanwords. A large number of superficially Arabic words and idioms are actually loan translations (calques) from Sicilian and Italian which would make little or no sense to speakers of other Arabic-derived languages. On the other hand, the local dialect of English,Maltese English, has considerable Maltese influence.
Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1934, replacing Italian and joining English. There are an estimated 371,900 speakers in Malta of the language, with statistics citing that 100% of the people are able to speak Maltese, 88% English, 66% Italian and 17% French, showing a greater degree of linguistic capabilities than most other European countries.[39] In factmultilingualism is a common phenomenon in Malta, with English, Maltese and on occasion Italian, used in everyday life. Whilst Maltese is thenational language, it has been suggested that with the ascendancy of English alanguage shift may begin;[40][41] though a survey dating to 2005 suggested that the percentage speaking Maltese as their mother tongue within Malta remained at 97%.[42]
The Constitution of Malta provides forfreedom of religion but establishesRoman Catholicism as thestate religion.[43] In 2021, Maltese were: 82.6% – Roman Catholics (mostlyRoman-Rite, with aByzantine-Rite minority), 5.9% – other Christans, 5.1% – atheists, 3.9% – Muslims, 2.24 – others, 0.26 – unspecified.[44]
Malta has long been a country of emigration, with big Maltese communities in English-speaking countries abroad as well as inFrance.
Mass emigration picked up in the 19th century, reaching its peak in the decades after World War II. Migration was initially to North African countries (particularlyAlgeria,Tunisia andEgypt); later Maltese migrants headed towards the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. There is little trace left of the Franco-Maltese communities in North Africa, most of them having been displaced, after the rise of independence movements, to places like France (especiallyMarseille and theRiviera), the United Kingdom or Australia. The Franco-Maltese are culturally distinct from the Maltese from Malta, in that the former have remained attached to the use of the Italian language (often, but not always, alongside Maltese) as well as speaking French. Although migration has ceased to be a social phenomenon of significance there are still important Maltese communities inAustralia,Canada, theUnited States and theUnited Kingdom. Emigration dropped dramatically after the mid-1970s and has since ceased to be a social phenomenon of significance.
Since Malta joined the EU in 2004,expatriate communities emerged in a number of European countries particularly inBelgium andLuxembourg.[citation needed]
yet it is in its morphology that Maltese also shows the most elaborate and deeply embedded influence from the Romance languages, Sicilian and Italian, with which it has long been in intimate contact.... As a result Maltese is unique and different from Arabic and other Semitic languages.
There's a gap between 800 and 1200 where there is no record of civilisation. It doesn't mean the place was completely uninhabited. There may have been a few people living here and there, but not much……..The Arab influence on the Maltese language is not a result of Arab rule in Malta, Prof. Felice said. The influence is probably indirect, since the Arabs raided the island and left no-one behind, except for a few people. There are no records of civilisation of any kind at the time. The kind of Arabic used in the Maltese language is most likely derived from the language spoken by those that repopulated the island from Sicily in the early second millennium; it is known as Siculo-Arab. The Maltese are mostly descendants of these people.
Repopulation is likely to have occurred by a clan or clans (possibly of Arab or Arab-like speaking people) from neighbouring Sicily and Calabria. Possibly, they could have mixed with minute numbers of residual inhabitants, with a constant input of immigrants from neighbouring countries and later, even from afar. There seems to be little input from North Africa.
Ibn Khaldun puts the expulsion of Islam from the Maltese Islands to the year 1249. It is not clear what actually happened then, except that the Maltese language, derived from Arabic, certainly survived. Either the number of Christians was far larger than Giliberto had indicated, and they themselves already spoke Maltese, or a large proportion of the Muslims themselves accepted baptism and stayed behind. Henri Bresc has written that there are indications of further Muslim political activity on Malta during the last Suabian years. Anyhow there is no doubt that by the beginning of Angevin times no professed Muslim Maltese remained either as free persons or even as serfs on the island.
Originally Maltese was an Arabic dialect but it was immediately exposed to Latinisation because the Normans conquered the islands in 1090, while Christianisation, which was complete by 1250, cut off the dialect from contact with Classical Arabic. Consequently Maltese developed on its own, slowly but steadily absorbing new words from Sicilian and Italian according to the needs of the developing community.
Together with colleagues from other institutions across the Mediterranean and in collaboration with the group led by David Goldstein at the University College, London, we have shown that the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy, including Sicily and up to Calabria. There is a minuscule amount of input from the Eastern Mediterranean with genetic affinity to Christian Lebanon....We documented clustering of the Maltese markers with those of Sicilians and Calabrians. The study is published in the Annals of Human Genetics by C. Capelli, N. Redhead, N. Novelletto, L. Terrenato, P. Malaspina, Z. Poulli, G. Lefranc, A. Megarbane, V. Delague, V. Romano, F. Cali, V.F. Pascali, M. Fellous, A.E. Felice, and D.B. Goldstein; "Population Structure in the Mediterranean Basin; A Y Chromosome Perspective", AHG, 69, 1–20, 2005..
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